Biofuel most expensive decarbonisation tech in oil and gas at $250/tonne of CO2 - Russian Energy Ministry

MOSCOW. Sept 17 (Interfax) - Production of biofuel comes with the highest cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions at $250 per tonne of CO2 equivalent, experts at the Russian Energy Ministry's Fuel and Energy Sector Analytics Center found after studying the strategic and reporting documents of the largest foreign oil and gas companies for 2024.

The combined installed capacity of biofuel production facilities is 11 million tonnes per year, the center said.

Projects to produce hydrogen are the second most expensive at $230 per tonne of CO2 equivalent. Hydrogen production facilities with combined capacity of 460 MW are at the construction stage.

A tonne of CO2 equivalent reduced using carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology costs $80. The combined installed capacity of such facilities is 110 million tonnes per year.

Charging stations for electric vehicles make it possible to prevent emissions at a cost of $59 per tonne. There are 197,000 EV charging stations in operation.

The average cost of reducing emissions by one tonne of CO2 equivalent with renewable energy sources is $30, including $32.90 for solar farms and $27.10 for wind farms.

The cheapest decarbonisation initiatives are projects to reduce methane emissions and increase energy efficiency, which cost $17 and $24 per tonne of CO2 equivalent, respectively.

Oil and gas majors' combined investments in decarbonisation totalled $18 billion, with BP accounting for 20% of this and PetroChina 18%, the center found. The study also looked at reports from Shell (SPB: RDS.A), Chevron, TotalEnergies , Aramco, Eni, Equinor, ConocoPhilips, Petronas, OMV, Repsol, Galp, Petrobras, KazMunayGas (KMG) and Socar.